By The Wholesome Show
From tales of historical idiocracy and scientific genius to weird and wacky cultural phenomena, Dr Rod Lamberts and Dr Will Grant are here to take you on a wild conversational journey, deep diving
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The podcast currently has 544 episodes available.
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We are heading back into the wholesome lab to re-jig our format so we are creating the best possible show for you all. Nothing is sacred during this rebuild so we are tearing it all apart! We'll be back under a different name, with a different show, still presented by your two favourite truant beer-wielding academics! See you in the future!
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In the 1990s, Samuel T. Cohen, the father of the neutron bomb, became extremely vocal about the fact that the Soviets had discovered a new raw material that could potentially spell the end of organised society. Red mercury had hit the market.
Apparently, when detonated in combination with conventional high explosives, it could create city-flattening blasts like a nuclear bomb. And, it would help make nuclear fusion weapons more efficient and considerably smaller. It was an arms dealer’s dream!
In theory, red mercury could produce enormous pressures and temperatures, sufficient to initiate a mini pure fusion explosion. Traditionally, fusion weapons need a fission component to trigger the deuterium fusion. However, with red mercury, this fission step is supposedly unnecessary. Cohen described it as a remarkably non-exploding high explosive. Sounds like something from a Marvel movie right?
SOURCES:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2004/sep/30/thisweekssciencequestions1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_T._Cohen#Red_Mercury_claims
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00963402.1997.11456737
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazher_Mahmood
https://web.archive.org/web/20081016050603/http://www.financialsense.com/editorials/douglass/2003/0311.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/22/magazine/the-doomsday-scam.html
https://www.gizbot.com/internet/news/what-is-red-mercury-and-why-people-are-ready-to-pay-lakhs-for-it-068487.html
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg13418241-900-only-fools-still-hunt-for-elusive-red-mercury/
CHAPTERS:
00:00 Samuel T. Cohen Concerns About New Raw Material
03:05 Red Mercury: Doomsday Dreams
07:41 Mass Destruction or Myth?
10:06 Red Mercury Hoaxes
14:23 Cohen Claims Red Mercury Exists
17:28 Frank Barnaby’s Investigations
23:30 Scammers and Fake Red Mercury
31:12 The Mystical and Sexual Properties of Mercury
41:16 The Enduring Red Mercury Scam
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Born just outside Vienna, Austria in November 1860, Hanns Hörbiger was an engineer by trade. He invented a steel valve for a blast furnace blowing engine which changed the game for efficient steel production. He also played a key role in the design and construction of the Budapest subway, the third in the world at the time. He was obviously a clever man. A real thinker. And some might say, a complete nut job.
A keen astronomer, one evening Hörbiger pointed his telescope at the moon and suddenly realised, it was all made of ice. It was so shiny! How could it not be ice? He looked at Mars. He looked at Neptune. He looked at the Milky Way…Everything in the cosmos was ice. And not only was it made of ice, but ice was the driving force of the entire universe.
Strangely, the German scientific community at the time thought Hörbiger was bonkers and didn’t pay attention to anything he said. World War I was happening so, you know, people had other things to think about.
But Hörbiger was not dissuaded. He became a total zealot and decided that all he needed to do was convince the masses of his ideas. Then the academic scientists would be pressured to agree.
SOURCES:
CHAPTERS:
00:00 The Dark Side of the German Students Union
03:12 Hans Hörbiger: Engineer & Inventor
05:35 Hörbiger's Cosmic Ice Theory
06:25 A Prophetic Dream and Pendulum Science
11:09 The Origin of the Solar System According to Hörbiger
17:23 Cults and Cosmic Theories
19:14 Hobiger's Zeal and Post-War Tactics
20:16 The Rise of the World Ice Movement
22:38 Hitler Embraces World Ice Theory
29:52 The Pseudoscience Impact on Nazi Germany
33:39 The Downfall and Legacy of the World Ice Theory
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Humans love a good apocalypse. Give us a blockbuster about a virus that obliterates the population, an asteroid that wipes out the entire planet, or anything with aliens and we lap it up. But have you ever thought about what will actually kill us at the finish line? Sure, we’d like to think the zombie apocalypse will be the winner, but if we’re talking about plausible ways to exterminate humanity, what’s a good way to go?
The end of the world as we know it isn’t all fiction. Life on Earth has come pretty close to getting wiped out a few times actually. Genetic analysis shows humanity plummeted to perilously low numbers—about 1,200 breeding humans (yes, we are all related)—when intense volcanic activity in Siberia caused global warming and wiped out 96% of plants and animals.
But life persisted. We might be inbred, but it seems total annihilation is harder to pull off than you think. The asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago didn’t completely destroy the earth, and humans managed to scrape through the black plague. So what could be our final end?
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What do humans and lobsters have in common? Apart from the fact that both have social hierarchies and serotonin, not all that much really. Last time we checked, we don’t live underwater or have tasty claws.
But despite the differences, esteemed (and often controversial) Canadian psychologist and Harvard Professor, Jordan Peterson, has become rather well known for his theory linking human social hierarchies to lobsters.
The first rule in Peterson’s book is “Stand up straight with your shoulders back." Indeed, aggressive and dominant lobsters stand up to exert their authority. Lobsters also don’t really like each other much on the whole, except when they're trying to mate. Mostly they’re just trying to be macho and make all the other lobsters their subordinates. The males compete for the best territory to win access to most females.
So the moral of the story is, just be a dickhead because you’re the same as a lobster?
CHAPTERS:
00:00 What is Sociobiology?
05:16 Jordan Peterson: Psychologist & traditionalist
12:57 12 Rules for Life: An Overview
15:52 Stand Up Straight with Your Shoulders Back
18:15 Lobster theory
20:01 Humans and Lobsters Exist in Hierarchies
23:22 The Science Behind Serotonin
26:31 Why Compare to the Lobster?
31:43 Cherry Picking to Illustrate Existing Beliefs
35:34 What’s Next on The Wholesome Show
SOURCES:
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
No one likes being told what to do. As soon as we can choose for ourselves, humans thrive on the sense of agency to wear what we want, eat what we want, say what we want and do what we want. And that includes laughing.
So why did so many television shows include a laugh track, telling us when to laugh at something? Was it an attempt to manipulate us? Or perhaps the jokes weren’t funny enough to conjure up a genuine guffaw. The Big Bang Theory was the last show to incorporate a laugh track and that ended in 2019. So with laugh tracks pretty much dead now, what caused producers to kick the canned laughter? You mean they have to rely on clever scriptwriting, innovative directing and engaging actors?!
Could the laugh track be dead forever?
CHAPTERS:
00:00 Laugh Tracks: Why?
03:30 Loathe It or Love It
06:09 The Invention of the LAFF Box
08:49 Laugh Boy Art
13:52 The Rise and Fall of the Laugh Track
15:44 Shows That Used Fake Laughter
19:44 Laugh Track: An Evil Innovation
23:01 Why Did The Laughing Stop?
30:34 Is It All That Bad?
31:57 What’s Next on The Wholesome Show
SOURCES:
- RIP canned laughter, the most evil innovation in TV history
- The Death of Laugh Tracks
- The Hollywood Sphinx and his Laff Box
- The Laugh Track: Loathe It or Love It
- The Most Hated Sound on Television
- The Real Reason TV Sitcoms Stopped Using Laugh Tracks
- This Sitcom’s Cancelation Signals The Death Of A 70-Year-Old Sitcom Trend
- 20 Funniest Sitcoms With Laugh Tracks
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Reality TV is a genre that has wormed its way into our screens, our culture, and—for many of us—our guilty pleasures. While some might dismiss these shows as frivolous entertainment (we’re using the term “entertainment” generously here), maybe there’s more to it than good old fashioned wife swapping, marrying strangers and surviving in the wild with nothing but a six-pack and an epic tan.
Perhaps reality TV is so popular because it holds up a mirror to society, showcasing the full spectrum of human emotions. Watching real people in real situations causes us to reflect on our own life choices and experiences. Or perhaps it’s all completely fake, scripted rubbish that makes the producers a hell of a lot of money. As a writer of The Simpsons, Dana Gould put it, reality TV is “people who aren’t actors working with people who aren’t writers in an amateur production of nothing.”
But how “real” is reality TV… really?
*CHAPTERS:*
00:00 Born In The Wild
07:30 Bet on Your Baby
11:06 How Real is Reality TV?
16:38 Release The Hounds
25:14 The Role of NDAs in Reality TV
29:14 The Naked Magazine Sweepstakes
30:21 Ethics and Consent in Reality TV
31:24 Who's Your Daddy?
33:59 Viewer Shame
37:11 When Reality TV Goes Too Far
43:17 The Upsides of Reality TV
48:23 What’s Next on The Wholesome Show
SOURCES:
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Christopher Havens was a smart kid. While it mightn’t have been the best move for his social status in the fourth grade, he was so keen on maths that he even tutored his classmates. Nerd alert! Maybe that’s why he eventually got caught up in the wrong crowd. He just wanted to fit in and be cool like everyone else.
And of course, being cool meant smoking weed and drinking alcohol, which led to mushrooms and LSD. And then things eventually spiralled into pain pills and crystal meth, which spiralled even more out of control, resulting in him murdering someone. Sigh.
Before going to prison, Haven’s dad gave him some helpful advice to survive incarceration - be the shark, not the clownfish. So, of course, Haven interpreted that advice as beating up another prisoner so he could join a gang. While that act might have confirmed his loyalty to the gang, it also opened the door to his new accommodation in solitary confinement. AKA Hell on earth.
Nothing but blank concrete walls, the smell of your own shit, and a bright fluorescent light to keep you company all day and all night. It was enough to drive a person mad, and by the sounds of the constant kicking and screaming next door, his neighbours were already there. Thankfully Havens was thrown a lifeline…in the form of a maths puzzle.
CHAPTERS:
SOURCES:
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Back in the old days, there were pretty slim pickings about what to do for a career. Basically, people just did what their father or mother did. Then, as education became more available to the masses, every parent’s dream was for their child to become a doctor, lawyer or accountant. Secure a respectable job and make the big bucks.
But what if you didn’t want to drag out your days in an ordinary job, working for the man in a major multinational corporation? What if you were more interested in say, mystical and astrological matters?
In 1996, when Rod was deciding his career fate, there was actually a one-year diploma in Astrology and Jungian psychology from The Urania Trust in London. He nearly signed up but chickened out and did the corporate grad entry thing instead. He loved it (NOT). Don’t make his mistake! Whatever you’re interested in, there’s a degree out there and some of them are pretty wild.
CHAPTERS:
00:00 Rod’s dreams for psychoanthropology
05:07 Masters of Science: Brewing and Distilling
09:36 Royal School of Needlework
12:18 Unusual Performance Degrees
15:20 The Art and Science of Time Measurement
20:56 Puppets and Existential Sadness
25:10 Surf Science In England
27:20 Theme Park Engineering
29:07 Bagpipe Studies at Carnegie Mellon
34:45 Ethical Hacking: Training criminals
38:56 What Next on The Wholesome Show
SOURCES:
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
World War II pilots ate a bunch of carrots. Back then, people were well aware that vitamin A was critical for healthy eyesight and that carrots were a good source of beta-carotene. So in 1940, versions of high-carotene strains of carrots were being tested on pilots to reduce night blindness. This was pretty important at the time because during the 1940 Blitzkrieg, the Luftwaffe often struck under the cover of darkness. The British government issued citywide blackouts to make it more difficult for German planes to hit targets, so maximising vision among pilots and civilians was critical.
The year before, the RAF had built the new secret Airborne Interception Radar (aka AI). Instead of being limited to land-bound detection stations, the AI Radar was on planes, able to pinpoint enemy bombers before they even reached the English Channel.
In 1940, RAF night fighter, John Cunningham, became the first pilot to shoot down an enemy plane using AI. He eventually tallied 20 kills - 19 of them at night - and became known as “cat eye” Cunningham. But, the Poms needed to make sure the Germans didn’t know about the secret of their success. So, the UK Ministry of Food came up with a different reason: Carrots.
Make the Germans think that carrots gave Cunningham night vision.. And just don’t mention the little Airborne Interception Radar that he had on his plane.
CHAPTERS:
00:00 Debunking Food Myths: Bread Crusts and Apples
02:16 The Spinach Iron Myth
04:32 Carrots and Night Vision
06:55 Ancient Egyptian cure: Liver Juice in the Eyes
09:17 Carrot Man Can’t Poop
13:19 WWII Airborne Interception Radar
16:49 Dig for Victory Campaign
19:59 Dr. Carrot and Wartime Propaganda
23:41 The Wholesome Verdict
29:01 What’s Next on The Wholesome Show
PREVIOUS EPISODES MENTIONED:
Arctic Cold Case Solved: Who Was First To The North Pole?
SOURCES:
Int J Eat Disord. 2012 Sep;45(6):816-8 doi: 10.1002/eat.22015.Epub 2012 Mar 19.
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The podcast currently has 544 episodes available.